does not necessarily reduce search times

Abstract Two haptic serial search tasks were used to investigate how the separations between items, and the number of Wngers used to scan them, inXuence the search time and search strategy. In both tasks participants had to search for a target (cross) between a Wxed number of non-targets (circles). The items were placed in a straight line. The target’s position was varied within blocks, and inter-item separation was varied between blocks. In the Wrst experiment participants used their index Wnger to scan the display. As expected, search time depended on target posi-tion as well as on item separation. For larger separations participants ’ movements were jerky, resembling ‘saccades’ and ‘Wxations’, while for the shortest separation the move-ments were smooth. When only considering time in contact with an item, search times were the same for all separation conditions. Furthermore, participants never continued their movement after they encountered the target. These results suggest that participants did not use the time during which they were moving between the items to process information about the items. The search times were a little shorter than those in a static search experiment (Overvliet et al. in Per-cept Psychophys, 2007a), where multiple items were pre-sented to the Wngertips simultaneously. To investigate whether this is because the Wnger was moving or because only one Wnger was stimulated, we conducted a second experiment in which we asked participants to put three Wngers in line and use them together to scan the items. Doing so increased the time in contact with the items for all separations, so search times were presumably longer in the static search experiment because multiple Wngers were involved. This may be caused by the time that it takes to switch from one Wnger to the other